Neža Knez
Touches, Changes, Viscous Time

multimedia installation

Museum of Contemporary Ar Metelkova, +MSUM
Opening: Thursday 20 April 2022 at 7 p.m. 
Duration: 20 April – 27 August 2023

Curator: Ana Mizerit

Neža Knez’s multimedia installation Touches, Changes, Viscous Time presents the artist’s methodological approach that is in itself part of the artwork and the prism through which the individual elements are to be viewed – not separately, but as enmeshed in a dynamic network of relations that become the core and the structure of the work. The numerous elements constituting the installation function as connecting threads between artistic forms, further structuring our communicational existence.

Knez organizes individual groups into sound, light, and material components and moving pictures on screens that together form a choreography of dynamic fictional shapes, transformed or redirected into new structures and energies. This occurs in specially adapted environments, in an experimental process in which the artist exposes materials to contact with and reaction to other materials, to bring about their transformation and re-composition. The relations she is particularly interested in are those between the natural and the artificial, the analog and the digital, the fragile and the robust, e.g. exposing liquid resin and wax to water, developing film and photographic paper using the phytogram method that employs the chemistry of plants, combining and juxtaposing objects and light, layering reflections of light, and diffusing images. She often mechanically and digitally processes the diametrically contrasting qualities of the materials with electronic technology and industrial materials.

A similar process of transformation as the one taking place in the artist’s studio during her experiments unfolds at the site of the installation, as visitors interact with the sound environment of the work. Over a microphone, the sound waves transform into vibrations of a water surface and of light, reshaping their appearance. 

The artist thus underscores as the key element of the entire installation the physical contact that triggers the process of the communication interface of public intimacy and is both the content and the form of the installation, since one continually affects and shapes the other. Such a concept includes ideas of continuity, direct contact, and resonance, creating a feeling of closeness to and empathy for the object, which is underscored by the narrative component in the installation. Treated in a variety of ways, the narrative component is an important part of the whole, including, in relation to the installation, the flow of subjectivity and playing with duality by frequently shifting the narrative levels and language registers. In this way the artist refers to her body, to touch, and to other bodies and their “incorporeality” as well as the space inhabited by the viewers and the spaces yet to come.

According to the artist, the pictures and objects thus produced result from encounters or from the proximity between the materials and media that are constantly in motion, where nothing is static or ever stops, but rather constitutes the moment of encounter of the various trajectories of different types of matter; they are like metabolism, accepting and digesting the exterior world, transforming it. Ana Mizerit

​_________________

Neža Knez was born in Ljubljana in 1990. In 2014 she graduated in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she is in a master’s program under the mentorship of Prof. Jože Barši. In 2017, she received the highest recognition Summa Cum Laude for her thesis. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad and has received several awards, including the Award of the Ministry of Culture, the European Mobile Award (I-Portunus - Goethe Institut), the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Recognition, the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Award for Exceptional Student Achievements, an award for an innovative approach to printmaking, the Prešeren Student Award of the University of Ljubljana, and the OHO Group Award. In 2018 she received a two-year residency for young artists at the Švicarija Creative Center. Between 2020 and 2022 she attended the WHW Academy and the Restart school of experimental film in Zagreb, successfully completing both studies. She lives and works between Ljubljana and Zagreb.

The exhibition is part of the series Draught, presenting younger authors and fresh ideas. 

Neža Knez at  raz_ume

Thanks to: Tin Dožić